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Opposition Leader Isn't U.S. Ally

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By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, The Associated Press

Published: January 2, 2008

LAHORE, Pakistan - In his two turns as prime minister in the 1990s, Nawaz Sharif tried to endear himself to Pakistan's people with populist policies and did little to please the United States and other foreign allies. He might yet get the chance to repeat that role.

Last week's assassination of his erstwhile rival, Benazir Bhutto, has left Sharif, who cultivated ties with the Taliban and tested nuclear weapons while in office, as the standard-bearer of the opposition to President Pervez Musharraf.

"He is the only credible national leader left on the scene," said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

That could be a worry to Musharraf and his chief international backer, the United States. Washington had pushed for Musharraf and Bhutto, both seen as pro-Western moderates, to work out some kind of power-sharing arrangement that would restore democracy in Pakistan and boost the fight against Taliban and al-Qaida.

No such deal seems likely with Sharif. The conservative former prime minister is fiercely critical of Musharraf, who as army chief deposed him in a coup nearly a decade ago.

"I think if America, if the Bush administration, continues to identify its friendship with this man, that it is antagonizing the 160 million people of Pakistan," he told The Associated Press in an interview at his palatial estate outside Lahore.

Sharif ruled out working with Musharraf - he called him a "one-man calamity" - and made clear that getting rid of the president would be his top priority if his faction of the Pakistan Muslim League wins upcoming elections.

"You want me to work with a man who is responsible for the current chaotic situation in this country? The nation needs to get rid of this man," he said.

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